The Jew was given 613 commandments (mitzvot), according to the
Talmud, which contain 248 positive commands and 365 negative ones.
The positive mitzvot equal the number of parts of the body; the
negative mitzvot correspond to the number of days in the solar
year.

Thus are we introduced to 613, the magic number of Torah scholarship
and Jewish living. Its source is the Babylonian Talmud; its importance
is echoed in a vast body of scholarly literature spanning a millennium;
its potential as an aid to studying and remembering Torah deserves
our careful analysis.

The Talmud refers to this number as taryag mitzvot. Classical
Jewish sources assign a numerical value to each letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, which is treated not as a mere utilitarian collection
of word components but as a conveyor of esoteric information through
the Kabbalistic medium of gematriya. Thus the gematriya
of taryag is 613 (tav = 400, raish = 200,
yud = 10, and gimel = 3). The tradition of taryag
mitzvot was developed by Rabbi Simlai of the Talmud, reasoning
as follows: Scripture tells us that Moses commanded the Torah
(Pentateuch) to the Children of Israel. The gematriya (numerical
equivalent) of the four Hebrew letters of the word Torah is
611. Add to this the two commandments which all of Israel heard
from God Himself at Mt. Sinai and you have a total of 613 -
taryag.

Before any ambitious Bible student goes plunging into the five
books of the Torah in search of a list of these commandments,
he should be warned that the task is more formidable than it seems.
The Torah is a fascinating complex of prophetic history and divine
guidance, encompassing the entire human and universal experience,
and the commandmnts contained therein represent but one of its
dimensions. Tradition has it that God used the Torah as His blueprint
for creating the world and that all of its letters can be combined
to form the different sacred names of the Deity. Attempting to
approach the Torah superficially is therefore as safe as negotiating
an iceberg. One unfamiliar with the Talmudic ground rules for
calculating the mitzvot is likely to come up with a number far
below or beyond the 613 total. In actuality the Torah contains
thousands of rules and the taryag mitzvot are only the
broad classifications.

The first recorded attempt to develop
scholarly criteria for counting the commandments was made close
to 1,000 years ago by Rabbi Shimon Kaeira, whose classic Halochot
Gedolot (The Great Laws) became the pacesetter in this field.
The famed medieval Spanish scholar, Rabbi Avraham lbn Ezra, suggests
that something along the lines of Rabbi Kaeira's work had been
written more than two millennia earlier by Joshua and the Children
of Israel when entering the Land of Israel. Commanded by God to
record the entire Torah in 70 languages on 12 great stones after
crossing the Jordan, they faced the apparently insurmountable
task of inscribing millions of words. lbn Ezra concluded that
they only listed the613 commandments in each language,
rather than the whole Torah.

Even if lbn Ezra was correct in his assumption, later generations
had no record of which commandments were indeed inscribed on those
stones. Kaeira's work won wide acceptance but by no means went
unchallenged. There has probably been no single item of the Talmud
which has been the subject of so much critical analysis as Rabbi
Simlai's statement. Rav Saadia Gaon's listing differed from Rabbi
Kaeira's, and Maimonides challenged them both. His own compilation
laid the groundwork for his Sefer Hamitzvot (Book of the
Mitzvot) and the classic Mishne Torah codification which
followed. Dozens of volumes and epic poems have been authored
throughout the generations of the taryag theme, with earlier
generations favoring Rabbi Kaeira's system and the later ones
following the pattern of Maimonides.

But on one thing there was consensus: the usefulness of the listing
of the mitzvot as a medium for gaining a perspective of all the
divine commandments included in the Torah's message to Jewry.
The great French Torah authority and itinerant preacher, Rabbi
Moshe of Coucy, memorized all of the 613 mitzvot as a personal
checklist when he set out in 1235 on a tour of Jewish communities
in France and Spain for the purpose of strengthening their fulfillment
of Torah commandments. French Jewry was then suffering from the
decree of Crusader King Louis IX (who was later canonized by the
Catholic Church) on the burning of the Talmud, and these talks
on the mitzvot filleda serious intellectual void. In one
community after another he was besieged by information-hungry
audiences asking him to expand his lectures into a fullfledged
book.

Modesty prevented the sage of Coucy from undertaking a work of
such magnitude for the public. Then one night he was commanded
in a dream to write a book on the mitzvot which was to be divided
into two sections: the positive commandments and the negative
ones. The response to this prophetic dream was the compilation
of the classic SeferHamitzvot Hagadol (The Great
Book of Mitzvot).

Not long afterwards, another French sage, Rabbi Yitzchak of Couerville,
compiled a more concise listingof the mitzvot, Sefer
Mitzvot Katan (The Small Book of Mitzvot), which he dispatched
at his own expense to Jewish communities in western Europe so
that they might copy its contents as a record of the commandments
they were obligated to fulfill.

The situation in Spain was different.
There was no need for mitzva listings as a replacement for banned
literature. But even here the need was felt for providing at least
a periodical review of the commandments in order to refresh the
Torah perspective of both scholar and layman. An ingenious method,
typical of thecharacter of medieval Spanish Jewry, was
developed. Scholar-poets wove all 613 commandments into long poems
to be recited once a year. The time chosen for this unique sort
of review was the long sleepless night with which Jews traditionally
usher in the Shavuot festival. As they celebrate this holiday,
known as "the season of the giving of our Torah," the
People of the Torah recall with shame that on a summer morning
in the year 2448 (1312 B.C.E.) in the Sinai Desert, they had to
be roused from their sleep by God, anxious to give them His Torah.
As an atonement for this ancestral lack of enthusiasm, they stay
awake all Shavuot eve studying Torah. The most renownedof
these poetic compilations which became part of the tikkun (order)
of Shavuot eve are the Azharot (warnings) of Rabbi Shlomo
lbn Gvirol, and it is his version which so many Oriental Jews
still recite during their all-night holiday vigil.

There is an apocryphal tale of how lbn Gvirol's masterpiece was
inspired. Once, when he was still an 18-year-old student in the
yeshiva, he heard the master announce that he would offer the
hand of his exceptional daughter in marriage to the disciple who
would present him with some new scholarly creation. That night
the young scholar-poet went without sleep, pouring all of his
energies into the writing of his Azharot and tossing the
finished manuscript into his master's home through an open skylight.
The following morning the master found the papers, recognized
lbn Gvirol's handwriting, and immediately made arrangements for
taking him as his son-in-law.

The once-a-year recital of taryag mitzvot through Azharot
poetry did not satisfy religious leaders in other lands who
felt a need for a more frequent review. Rav Moshe of Couerville
recorded his listing of relevant commandments on seven pages so
that a Jew could complete the entire listing each week through
daily review. Rabbi Aharon Halevi of Barcelona, a contemporary
of the sages of Coucy and Couerville, arranged his Sefer Hachinuch
(Book of Education) according to weekly Torah portions to
encourage his son and other youths to reflect upon the mitzvot
contained in each chapter. The motivation for this effort, as
exIplained in his introduction, has a ring of contemporary significance:
"To familiarize them with the mitzvot and to occupy their
minds with pure thought and meaningful calculation lest they take
into their hearts calculations of amusement, insignificance and
meaninglessness; and even when they grow older these mitzvot shall
not depart from them." The weekly portion system of listing
the mitzvot for review was utilized a few centuries later by Rabbi
Yeshaya Halevi Horowitz in his Shnei Luchot Habrit (Two
Tablets of the Covenant).

The idea of a comprehensive review each week
was revived by Rabbi Shabtai Hacohen (1621-1663), author of the
classical Siftei Cohen on the Shulchan Aruch. His
Poel Zedek (Worker of Righteousness) was a listing of the
613 mitzvot, each identified by a one-line seriptual source. He
divided them into seven sections to enable readers to easily complete
a total review each week. Rabbi David Arel of Volozhin made the
same time breakdown in his elaboration of the Keter Torah (Crown
of Torah) compilation of mitzvot authored by Rabbi David Vital.

Even a week was too long for some authors. Rabbi Shabtai
considered a daily review of all the mitzvot as the ideal fulfillment
of the prophetic command: "This book of the Torah shall not
depart from your mouth, but you shall study therein day and night."
He submitted his weekly plan only as a concession to those who
couldn't keep the daily pace.

Somewhere in between the ideal and practical paces discussed by
his predecessors is the quota suggested by a Torah giant of the
last generation. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Hacohen Kagan (1838-1933),
known as the Chafetz Chaim because of a Torah classic by that
name which he authored, wrote Sefer Hamitzvot Hakatzeir (Abridged
Book of Mitzvot) in which he offered brief descriptions of the
commandments relevant to our own times. He advised reviewing half
the positive commands on Monday and half on Thursday, repeating
the same pattern the following week in regard to negative commands.

Almost a millennium is spanned by all these efforts, from the
pacesetting, comprehensive Halachot Gedolot till the Chafetz
Chaim's concentration on relevance. The common denominator of
all these works is their authors' conviction that it is vital
for a Jew to regularly review the commandments as a means of refreshing
his sense of duty and his general Torah perspective.

In this age of the information explosion, there is still very
little available for the uninformed Jew curious about his heritage,
but too impatient to read lengthy works at the outset of his investigation.
The experience of 1,000 years teaches us that Taryag mitzvot
may well provide both the medium and the message for the student
in search of an introduction to the vast wealth of Torah knowledge.

Articles may be distributed to another person intact without prior permission. We also encourage you to include this material in other publications, such as synagogue or school newsletters. Hardcopy or electronic. However, we ask that you contact us beforehand for permission in advance at ohr@ohr.edu and credit for the source as Ohr Somayach Institutions www.ohr.edu